AN INSTITUTION’S ARBITRARY GUIDELINES AND USE
OF POLLING ARE UNRELIABLE AND BIASED AND ARE NOT A LEGAL MEANS TO EXCLUDE
CANDIDATES WITHIN A POLITICAL RACE.Maryland media and 501c3 organizations are
using the wording of this Supreme Court decision in their language in
guidelines that allow them to be selective and arbitrary. The important thing to remember is the case
above involved a third party and its candidate……not individual primary races
within the same party. When Cindy Walsh
for Governor of Maryland is told I am not viable, or I am not one of the major
party candidates having strong public support…..this language comes from the
ruling above and has nothing to do with the Democratic Primary for Governor of
Maryland. To define someone ‘not viable’
while willfully keeping that candidate from any media exposure of candidate or
platform and from polling instruments is unacceptable. An election is about the public’s decision as
to what platform and candidate they want to support and allowing the public to
become informed on all candidates and platforms in a single race is critical. I contend that the guidelines Maryland
institutions craft for these events are not legal and if any part is ruled
legal, polling is too arbitrary to be one of the guidelines used.

On several occasions I was told Cindy Walsh for Governor of Maryland was
excluded because of polling guidelines for organizations and events. The
University of Maryland College Park told me their guidelines were 15% polling
needed to participate. The Maryland League of Women Voters said their
guidelines required 10% polling to participate. By the time I went to
Maryland Public Television----the polling guidelines were then down to 5%
because none of the candidates in either political party were polling.

Each time I was given these polling
requirements, there were candidates in all of these forums failing to meet
these some or all of these polling requirements and the fact that Cindy Walsh
for Governor was not represented in these polls done for the Maryland
governor's race shows no way for me to have had polling numbers. Each time I was told the guideline was
campaign contributions there were candidates in these forums/debates not
garnering campaign funding support. So,
the entire process was built around the desire to use arbitrary guidelines to
keep certain candidates out of these large and important forums/debates.
As you see below, even the polling information towards the end becomes suspect
as ever higher percentages of margin of error had to be used to get many of
these candidates to even poll.

My campaign will subpoena the polls taken on this governor's race to review the
veracity and legitimacy of poll procedures.Imagine if with the poll below Cindy Walsh had
been one of the choices. Would that have
changed the undecided? Even the second
poll done later in the primary using higher margins of error to boost polling
results for candidates had a sizable number of undecided -----could that be
Cindy Walsh for Governor of Maryland?
The attempts by pollsters confronted by my campaign to define selective
polling as random polling is not correct.
Poll size matters when these numbers are so low and we all know that
calling 2,000 registered voters is only a matter of a handful of people working
for a few hours so getting the best results is not financially prohibitive.In this Maryland
governor's race it is clear that the exclusion has only to do with a
candidate's platform. The democratic candidates excluded have a
distinctly different set of policy stances than those championed. Cindy Walsh is excluded because of her
platform.When does ‘undecided’ become all of the other
candidates left off of the poll? We see
here that many of the candidates were not breaking the 15% polling guideline;
the 10% polling or in some cases even the 5% polling guidelines but all these
candidates were in the media and in all forums and debates-----except Cindy
Walsh for Governor of Maryland. The
pollsters were claiming apathy with the candidates. Whether selective sampling or automated
calling, the polling parameters are not offering the best picture and all of
this weighs heavily on a candidate deemed unviable by these guidelines.Undecided voters dominate in new gubernatorial
poll

April 23, 2014|By Michael Dresser

“Undecided” continues to hold a commanding lead
in both the Democratic and Republican primary races for governor, according to
a new poll released Wednesday by St. Mary’s College of Maryland.

The poll, an inaugural venture by the Southern Maryland college’s political science department, shows little movement
in the race since previous surveys. The results suggest that voters
have not tuned in to the June 24 primary contest.

Among the Democrats, the polls showed Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown
with the support of 27 percent of registered primary voters.
Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler and Del. Heather R. Mizeur of Montgomery
County lagged behind at 11 percent and 8 percent respectively.

While Brown maintained a strong margin over his rivals, two
Democrats said they were undecided for every one that backs the lieutenant
governor in his bid to succeed term-limited Gov. Martin O’Malley.

The 54 percent undecided level on the Democratic side was eclipsed by the
uncertainty among Republicans. Almost seven in 10 said they had not made
a choice.

Among those that have picked a candidate, Larry Hogan, a former Ehrlich
administration official and founder of the conservative group Change Maryland,
led with 16 percent. Harford County Executive David R. Craig trailed with 8
percent. The severely underfunded campaigns of Del. Ron George of Anne
Arundel County and Charles County business executive Charles Lollar
were stuck below 4 percent.

Susan Grogan, professor of political science at St. Mary’s, said she doesn’t
see much excitement about the race among
voters.

“I would suspect we’re going to have a very low turnout,” she said.

The poll strongly tracks previous surveys of the race and shows little
sign that any candidate is gaining significant ground. For instance, a poll
released by The Baltimore Sun in February showed Brown with 35 percent, Gansler
with 14 percent and Mizeur with 10 percent. On the Republican side Hogan
polled at 13 percent and Craig at 7 percent.

The methodologies of the two polls were significantly different. Unlike the St.
Mary’s poll, The Sun's poll used live callers and concentrated on 500 likely
voters rather than all registered voters. The college’s automated poll surveyed 954
registered voters and had a margin of error of 3.17 percentage points.

Here we have the typical poll for this Maryland governor’s
race-----the same 3 candidates appear in every venue covering the primary. Would anyone know there are other democratic
candidates running? Would it be assumed
if they were not in all of the coverage those candidates were not viable? Of course, that is why there is willful and
deliberate exclusion. Margin of Error
goes up because polling numbers are so low.
This allows the polling numbers to swing by ever larger margins. Washington Post Maryland poll: 2014
Governor's race, health care law

Brown leads Gansler, Mizeur in Md. Democratic
governor's race
Q: (AMONG DEMOCRATS AND DEM-LEANING INDEPENDENTS) As you may know, the
candidates in June's Democratic primary election for governor include (Anthony
Brown), (Doug Gansler) and (Heather Mizeur). Suppose the election were held
today, for whom would you vote? (Click 'detailed view' for results among
registered and likely voters)

Registered Voters vs Likely Voters......5% ME for democrats 6.5% ME
for republicans in first poll; 7% ME for democrats 11% for
republicans in second poll.
_____________________________________________________________________

This was not the first time Cantor pollster John McLaughlin has been wrong.

June 11, 2014 National Journal

Eric Cantor's pollster whiffed.

Less than a week before voters dumped the House majority leader, an internal
poll for Cantor's campaign, trumpeted to the Washington
Post, showed Cantor cruising to a 34-point victory in his
primary. Instead, Cantor got crushed, losing by 10 percentage points.

How did Cantor's pollster, veteran Republican survey-taker John McLaughlin, get
the historic race so terribly wrong?

First, let's look at the poll. The survey had Cantor ahead of his opponent,
little-known professor David Brat, 62 percent to 28 percent, with 11 percent of
voters undecided, according to the Post. It polled 400 likely Republican
primary voters on May 27 and 28.

It was supposed to have had a margin of error of 4.9 percentage points. The
error, of course, was far larger. Statistically, polls are expected to fall
outside that margin of error on 1 in 20 surveys. But in the end, it
undercounted Brat's support by about 27 percentage points and overestimated
Cantor's by 17 points. The poll was widely mocked on
Twitter.

In an email to National Journal, McLaughlin, whose firm has been paid
nearly $75,000 by Cantor's campaign since 2013, offered several explanations:
unexpectedly high turnout, last-minute Democratic meddling, and stinging late
attacks on amnesty and immigration.

"Primary turnout was 45,000 2 years ago," McLaughlin wrote.
"This time 65,000. This was an almost 50% increase in turnout."

Translation: McLaughlin's estimate of who was a "likely Republican"
voter was way, way off the mark. But Cantor's total number of votes still
shrank, even as the total number of primary voters went up dramatically in
2014. He secured 37,369 primary votes in 2012 and less than 29,000 this year,
with 100 percent of precincts reporting.

Meanwhile, McLaughin wrote that "attacks on immigration and amnesty
charges from the right in last week hurt."

Then McLaughlin cited the "Cooter" factor – the fact that former Rep.
Ben Jones, a Georgia Democrat who played Cooter in The Dukes of Hazzard,
had written an open letter urging Democrats to vote for Brat to help beat
Cantor.

"Over the weekend Democrats like Ben Jones and liberal media were driving
their Democratic voters on the internet into the open primary," McLaughlin
wrote. "Eric got hit from right and left. In our polls two weeks out Eric
was stronger with Republicans at 70% of the vote, but running under 50% among
non Republicans."

"Untold story," McLaughlin continued, "is who were the new
primary voters? They were probably not Republicans."

Another problem, unmentioned by McLaughlin in the email, was timing. The poll
was conducted May 27 and 28 but leaked to the Post on June 6. The
dynamics on the ground could well have shifted by then, but Team Cantor may
have wanted to put on a happy face. They ended up with egg on it instead.

This was not McLaughlin's first out-of-whack-with-the-results poll. For
instance, a 2013 McLaughlin survey showing Democrat Ed Markey nearly tied in
his Massachusetts Senate race inspired California winemaker
John Jordan to plunge $1.4 million of his own money into a super PAC
backing Markey's opponent. Markey won by 10 percentage points.

David Nir of Daily Kos Elections compiled a list
last year of inaccurate McLaughlin surveys. In October 2012, McLaughlin polls
showed Mitt Romney winning in Colorado (by 4 points) and Virginia (by 7 points),
even though Romney lost those states by 5 points and 4 points, respectively. In
late October 2012, a McLaughlin poll in Rhode Island showed Democratic Sen.
Sheldon Whitehouse up by only 8 points against his GOP challenger. Whitehouse
won by 30.

Even that poll, though, was more accurate than his last one for Cantor.This is an example of the kinds of polling used by media for
results in political races and/or political issues. Gonzales is a marketing corporation based in
Annapolis and one can see the level of conflict of interest in providing
polling information. Are we selling a
candidate or issue or are we asking the public for unbiased opinions? Academic polls are generally done for no
charge and offer more checks and balance on bias. The American people are hearing over and over
at all levels of government elections that the polls do not meet the actual
voting result.Gonzales Research conducts surveys of registered voters – nationally,
statewide, and in local jurisdictions. Each of the surveys listed here
is in the public domain, but we ask that Gonzales Research & Marketing
Strategies, Inc. of Annapolis be credited if any of the surveys are cited in
a story or column.
Please select a category of Survey.‘Since the 2012 election, much of
the speculation about Gallup's miss has centered on the likely voter model the
firm uses to select survey participants, a method it has applied with only
minor modifications since the 1950s’.Gallup Presidential Poll: How Did Brand-Name Firm Blow
Election?
Posted: 03/08/2013 8:16 am
EST | Updated: 03/08/2013 6:40 pm EST Huffington Post
WASHINGTON -- Gallup, which has long
touted itself as the most trusted survey brand in the
world, is facing a crisis. If Barack Obama's reelection in November
was widely considered a win for data crunchers,
who had predicted the president's victory in the face of skeptical pundits, it
was a black mark for Gallup, whose polls leading up to Election Day had given the
edge to Republican nominee Mitt Romney.
Obama prevailed in the national
popular vote by a nearly 4 percentage point margin.
Gallup's final pre-election poll,
however, showed Romney leading Obama 49 to 48 percent. And the firm's tracking
surveys conducted earlier in October found Romney ahead by bigger margins,
results that were consistently the most favorable to Romney among the national
polls.
Since the election, the Gallup
Poll's editor-in-chief, Frank Newport, has at times downplayed the significance
of his firm's shortcomings. At a panel in November, he characterized Gallup's
final pre-election poll as "in the range of where it ended up" and
"within a point or two" of the final forecasts of other polls. But in
late January, he announced that the company was conducting a "comprehensive
review" of its polling methods.
There is a lot at stake in this
review, which is being assisted by University of Michigan political scientist
and highly respected survey methodologist Michael Traugott. Polling is a
competitive business, and Gallup's value as a brand is tied directly to the
accuracy of its results.
The firm's reputation had already
taken a hit last summer when an investigation by The Huffington
Post revealed that the way Gallup accounted for race led to an
under-representation of non-whites in its samples and a consistent
underestimation of Obama's job approval rating, prompting the firm to make changes in its methodology.
(Since Gallup implemented those changes in October, the "house
effect" in its measurement of Obama's job rating has significantly
decreased.)
And in January, Gallup and USA Today ended their
20-year polling partnership. While both parties described the
breakup as amicable, the pollster's misfire on the 2012 election loomed large
in the background.
Over the years, Gallup's business
has grown and evolved into much more than public opinion polling. The company
currently describes itself primarily as a "performance management consulting firm," and
the Gallup Poll is just one of its four divisions.
Yet Gallup's reputation as the nation's premier public opinion pollster remains
central to its business, helping it win millions of dollars in contracts with
the federal government, for which the firm conducts research and collects data.
That portion of Gallup's business is
coming under a different sort of pressure. In November, the Justice Department joined a
whistleblower lawsuit filed by a former employee accusing the firm
of overcharging taxpayers by at least $13 million in its federal contracts.
Despite the election results being
hailed as a victory for pollsters generally, Gallup's shortcomings have also
led some to question whether the methods of all national polling firms
are outdated.
From the Obama campaign, which
supplemented traditional polling methods with advanced data analytics drawn
from public voting records, the criticism was more pointed.
"We spent a whole bunch of time figuring out that American polling is
broken," Obama campaign manager Jim Messina told a post-election forum.
The reelection team's internal numbers told a different story about trends in
the fall and accurately forecast the outcome, leading Messina to argue that
"most of the public polls you were seeing were completely
ridiculous."
An assessment of Gallup's recent
struggles shows that its problems measuring the electoral horse race in 2012
were more severe, but similar in nature, to those faced by many other media
polls. The firm's internal review, therefore, offers Gallup a chance not only
to identify what went awry in 2012, but also to help the public understand how
polling works -- and sometimes doesn't -- in the current era. In particular,
the review could help shed light on two major problem areas for polling firms
today: how they treat their "likely voter" models and how they draw
their samples from the general population.
Newport told HuffPost that although
the "major purpose" of Gallup's review is to "focus on our
practices and procedures," it may also "shed some light on factors
operative in this election which may have affected pre-election polls more
generally."
Gallup has a chance both to reassert
its position at the top of the field and to restore faith in all similar
national polls -- if it confronts this review with transparency and seriousness
of purpose.
CHOOSING 'LIKELY VOTERS'
Since the 2012 election, much of the
speculation about Gallup's miss has centered on the likely voter model the
firm uses to select survey participants, a method it has applied with only
minor modifications since the 1950s.
The basic idea is straightforward:
Gallup uses answers to survey questions to identify the adult respondents who
seem most likely to vote. In practice, that means asking a series of questions
about voter registration, intent to vote, past voting, interest in the campaign
and knowledge of voting procedures -- all characteristics that typically
correlate with a greater likelihood of actually casting a ballot -- and
combining responses to those questions into a seven-point scale. Those
respondents who score highest on the scale are classified as "likely
voters," after Gallup makes a judgment call about its cutoff point -- that
is, the percentage of adults that best matches the probable level of voter
turnout.
Until the fall of an election year,
most national pollsters choose to report their survey results for the larger
population of self-described registered voters. But in the final weeks of the
campaign, Gallup and others shift to the narrower segment of likely voters,
which has typically made their estimates moreaccurate by filtering out
registered voters who aren't likely to go to the polls on Election Day.
What went wrong in 2012? One
possibility is that Gallup set its cutoff point too low, including too few
people. While Gallup's final poll gave Romney a 1 point edge among likely
voters, the results from the same poll for all registered voters gave Obama a 3
point lead (49 to 46 percent), very close to the president's actual margin of
victory of 3.9 points.
Gallup was not alone on this score.
Of five other national pollsters that reported results for both likely and
registered voters on their final surveys, only the Pew Research Center made its
results more accurate by narrowing from registered to likely voters. The
average of all six pollsters had the final Obama lead almost exactly right
among registered voters (3.7 percentage points), but too close (0.8 percentage
points) among likely voters.
One theory as to why the pool of
self-described registered voters so closely resembled the actual electorate is
that many non-likely voters were, in effect, already screening themselves out
-- by opting out of the survey. As the Pew Research Center reported in May
2012, actual voters are already more likely to respond to its
surveys, while non-voters are more likely to hang up. "This pattern,"
Pew wrote, "has led pollsters to adopt methods to correct for the possible
over-representation of voters in their samples."
In the case of Pew Research, one such
correction is setting the cutoff used to determine likely voters at a slightly
higher level than the turnout Pew actually expects. In 2012, for example, the
pollster expected a 58 percent turnout among adults, but set the cutoff level
at 63 percent of adult respondents to compensate for the presumed non-response
bias.
While Gallup has detailed the workings of
its likely voter model, the firm has not yet published information about either
the cutoff percentage it used or the response rates achieved by its surveys in
2012. A complete review, made public, could shed light on this issue.
Another source of criticism of
Gallup's likely voter model is its reliance on self-reported interest in the
election. In a review conducted after the 2012
election, Republican pollster Bill McInturff shared data from a
survey his company conducted in California in 2010. It found that while those
who rated their interest in the election the highest were the most likely to
vote, roughly 40 percent of those with lower reported interest -- those who rated
their interest as four or lower on a 10-point scale -- still voted in the 2010
elections.
Perhaps more to the point: McInturff
reported that among respondents who actually voted from his 2010 surveys
in California, older and white voters expressed much greater interest in the
election than younger and non-white voters.
"It is clear, a traditional
Likely Voter Model based only on self-described interest and self-described
likelihood to vote missed the scope of the turnout of 18-29 year olds and
Latinos in 2012," McInturff wrote.
Interest in the campaign is just one
of seven turnout indicators that Gallup uses in its model, and pollsters have long understood that
although their likely voter models typically make their results more accurate,
they often misclassify whether individual voters
will or will not vote. But a more complete investigation based on
Gallup's extensive data would provide more clues about why its likely voter
model had Romney ahead, as well as why other pollsters understated Obama's
margin of victory to a lesser degree.
LANDLINES AND CELL PHONES
There is one important
methodological difference between Gallup and other pollsters that nearly
everyone missed in 2012 and that may explain -- at least in part -- why
Gallup's numbers went wrong. It involves a significant change in the way Gallup
draws its samples, first implemented in April 2011, that no other national
polling firm has yet adopted.
The change is part of a larger story
about the immense challenges now facing sampling procedures that have been
standard for decades. Since news organizations first started conducting polls
via telephone in the late 1960s and early 1970s, their samples have typically
been drawn using a method known as "random digit dialing" (RDD).
The idea is to start with a random
sample of telephone number prefixes or "exchanges" (the 555 in
202-555-1212) and then, for each selected prefix, randomly generate the last
four digits to form a complete number. (The process is more complex in actual
practice, but that's the basic gist.)
The rationale for RDD is that it
creates random samples of all working phone numbers, both listed and unlisted.
By contrast, samples drawn from published directories (i.e., the white pages)
miss a significant chunk of households with unlisted numbers. As of 2011, 45
percent of U.S. households were not included in published phone directories,
according to the sampling vendor Survey Sampling International.
The RDD sampling procedure works
similarly for mobile phones, since most mobile numbers are assigned to
exchanges reserved for that purpose. So most national media polls now combine
two RDD samples, one of landline phones and a second of cell phones.
The rapidly changing patterns in
phone use in recent decades have also increased pollster costs. RDD sampling
has always been inefficient, because some portion of the randomly generated
numbers are inevitably non-working, and the process of accurately sorting out
the live numbers is time-consuming and expensive. Over the years, however, the greater cost of polling by cell phone
and a steady decline in the efficiency of
the sampling process have combined to make traditional RDD methods significantly
more expensive.
Along the way, pollsters have
nibbled around the edges of their RDD methods in search of acceptable tweaks
that might hold down costs. Prominent national media pollsters have typically
been cautious about more radical changes. Most, for example, eschew the use of
so-called predictive dialing -- the
annoying technology that only connects a live interviewer once the respondent
picks up the phone and says "hello" -- because of concerns that
potential respondents will just hang up. (You've likely experienced such
annoyance yourself if you've ever answered your phone and then waited for a
telemarketer or automated voice to come on the line.)
In recent years, however, a team of survey researchers at the
University of Virginia (UVA) noticed a potentially cost-cutting
silver lining in the massive growth of cell phone usage: Most of the Americans
with unlisted landline numbers now have mobile phone service. So it may be
possible, at least in theory, to reach virtually all adults with a combination
of RDD samples of mobile phones and of listed landline phones.
Moving from randomly generated
numbers to listed numbers would save pollsters time and money, since most calls
to landlines would reach live numbers and the callers would spend far less time
dialing non-working numbers that ring endlessly without answer.
As of 2006, the UVA researchers
found that this combination could theoretically reach 86 percent of U.S. adults, but the rapid growth
of cell phone usage has increased that number significantly. Two years later,
they conducted field tests showing this combined sampling method could
theoretically reach all but 1 to 2 percent of
adults in three counties in Virginia.
The study caught the attention of
the methodologists at Gallup, whose investment in standard RDD interviewing is
substantial. Since early 2008, Gallup has partnered with the "global well-being company" Healthways
to conduct the Gallup Daily, a tracking survey of 3,500 adults that encompasses
both political questions like presidential job approval and the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index. The survey launched using
the increasingly expensive combination of RDD calls to mobile and listed and
unlisted landline phones. Healthways has committed to fund the project for 25 years.
In April 2011, however, Gallup began
drawing the landline portion of its
samples for the Gallup Daily and other surveys from phone numbers
listed in electronic directories. At the time, the only indication of a change
was a two-sentence description that began appearing in the methodology blurb at
the bottom of articles on Gallup.com: "Landline telephone numbers are
chosen at random among listed telephone numbers. Cell phones numbers are
selected using random digit dial methods."
Newport, the Gallup editor-in-chief,
told HuffPost that the switch was made after internal "analysis and
pre-test research" confirmed the findings of the UVA study. "There
were very few landline unlisteds who were landline only, 2-3 percent," he
wrote via email, "and likely to decline in the future."
To make this new sampling method
work, Gallup began "weighting" up a small percentage of respondents
-- those interviewed by cell phone who say they also have an unlisted
landline -- to compensate for the missing 2 to 3 percent of adults who are
totally out of reach -- those with an unlisted landline and no cell phone. To
accommodate this additional weighting, Gallup boosted the number of cell phone
interviews from 20 to 40 percent of completed calls.
On its face, that compromise seems
reasonable. But it requires Gallup to weight its data more heavily than other
national pollsters.
That heavier weighting likely
exacerbated a problem HuffPost identified in its June 2012 investigation of
Gallup, which showed that the "trimming" of especially large weights
explained why the firm consistently failed to match its own targets for race
and Hispanic origin. The effort to reduce weighting is also partly why Gallup
chose to increase the percentage of calls placed to cell phones again, in
October 2012, to 50 percent -- a larger percentage than used by most other
media pollsters last year. As Newport said at the time,
the change would allow for smaller weights and thus "provide a more
consistent match with weight targets."
MISSING THE UNLISTED
Does this aspect of Gallup's methodology
explain why it showed a pronounced house effect late in the presidential race?
"Our preliminary research on the election tracking," Newport said,
"suggests that this did not have a significant impact on our election
estimates."
Gallup has not publicly released any
of the raw data it collected for pre-election surveys in October or November
2012. To try to check Newport's assertion, HuffPost reviewed survey data
collected by the Democratic-sponsored polling organization Democracy Corps as
part of a pre-election report on the
importance of cell phone interviewing.
Like many other media pollsters,
Democracy Corps called RDD samples of both cell phones and landlines, but its
sample vendor indicated which of the selected numbers were also listed in
published directories. This extra bit of information can help give us a sense
of the degree to which missing unlisted-landline-only households might have
affected Gallup's samples.
The following chart illustrates the
most important tabulation from the Democracy Corps data. On the one hand, the
households that Gallup misses altogether -- those with an unlisted landline and
no cell phone -- supported Obama over Romney by a lopsided 22 point margin (58
to 36 percent). On the other hand, this subgroup is tiny, just 2 percent of all
likely voters, and would have little effect on the overall vote estimate even
if it were missed completely.
Although the Democracy Corps data generally back up Newport's assertion that
listed directory sampling did not significantly impact Gallup's election
numbers, he nonetheless confirmed that it is "one of the elements we are
reviewing and one of several areas where we will be conducting additional
experimental research."
And for good reason. Anything as
unusual as Gallup's methodological change deserves a closer look, because any
sample design that leaves people out is something that should be scrupulously
examined.
"I'm glad that Gallup wants to
help explain what happened and they're taking a rigorous approach to looking at
their methods which are different than they had been," said Andrew Kohut,
founding director of the Pew Research Center. "There's every reason to see
if the changes in those methods have accounted for how their poll did."
But like other pollsters HuffPost
interviewed for this story, Kohut questioned Gallup's assumptions and the added
complexity of the weighting scheme required to compensate for the potentially
missing respondents. "It's hard enough to take into account the right
ratio between the people who are both from the cell and landline. Now you're
adding another dimension, [which is] very complicating," he said.
At issue is not just the 2 to 3
percent whose only phone is an unlisted landline, but also the larger number
with an unlisted landline and a cell phone who rarely or never answer
calls from strangers on their cell phones. The Democracy Corps data indicate
that those voters who said they used their unlisted landline for most
calls were as heavily pro-Obama as those who had only an unlisted
landline. Did Gallup's procedure account for bias against those dual users who
are much easier to reach via landline?
Also, Gallup relies on its
respondents to self-report their use of an unlisted landline. Some might not
know whether their number is listed in a telephone directory. To what extent
did Gallup test the accuracy of those self-reports?
Finally, even if the impact of the
listed directory sampling is minor, it may have worked in concert with other
small errors in Romney's favor to create Gallup's 2012 problems. All surveys
are subject to small, random design errors that usually cancel each other out.
It's when a series of small errors affect the data in the same direction that
minor house effects can turn into significant errors.
TRANSPARENCY RENEWED?
Newport initially portrayed
Gallup's post-election review as a routine examination, but his more recent announcement
of Traugott's involvement and the comprehensive nature of the review suggests
something less ordinary.
Traugott led an evaluation of polling misfires
during the 2008 presidential primaries, which was undertaken by the American
Association for Public Opinion Research and marked by its commitment to
transparency. AAPOR asked the public pollsters involved to answer extensive
questions about their methodologies and published their responses. Gallup was
one of a handful of organizations that went the extra mile and provided
Traugott's committee with the raw data gathered from individual respondents,
along with permission to deposit those data in a publicly accessible archive.
That openness was consistent with
Gallup's history. In 1967, founder George Gallup first proposed the
"national standards group for polling" that became the National
Council on Public Polls. Among other things, George Gallup wanted
pollsters to commit to sharing "technical details that would help explain
why polling results of one organization do not agree with those of another,
when they differ." He also played a leading role in establishing
the Roper Center Public Opinion Archives, where Gallup and other
public pollsters have long deposited their raw data to be used in scholarly
research and to provide a "public audit of polling data."
Kohut -- who began his career at
Gallup and once served as its president -- underscored the continuing
importance of transparency. Ordinary Americans may not "understand the ins
and outs of [survey] methods," he said, but they need reassurance that
differences between polls "are accounted for by methodological factors
rather than based upon the political judgments of the people who run these
polls."
Will Gallup's report on 2012 include
a public release of the raw data from the final month of its presidential
tracking poll? "We may certainly consider that," Newport said via
email, noting that "we at Gallup will be writing up our conclusions and
sharing them with interested parties."
Given the scrutiny that has fallen
upon pollsters for last year's presidential predictions, let's hope the
"interested parties" include all of us.
_____________________________________________________________________

St. Mary’s College performs what looks to be the most
academic and reliable polling in the State of Maryland yet it too uses methods
that diminish accuracy like automated calling and small cohorts for extremely
low polling figures. As you can see
below, St. Mary’s does not post its polling model even as it says the
information is coming so we do not know how they randomized, what the protocol
for failed calling attempts was, etc.
The other polling agencies like Gonzalez, Sun, Washington Post use
models that make polling data irrelevant.
The percentages that make it to media for each candidate always include
those methods with higher margin of error and ‘likely’ voter cohorts. Again, it is not cost or time that figures
into these choices of polling methods because a handful of people working just
a few hours can call 1,000 voters. It is
a willful and deliberate attempt to use polling data to manipulate the election
process.Welcome To INSIGHTSThe Maryland Poll or MPoll, our Blog
INSIGHTS, and Hosted BlogsProfessor Susan Grogan April’s MPoll results are in! Download Graphs of the
MPOll‘s Results.You are on the Welcome (Home) Page of
INSIGHTS, The Maryland Poll’s blog. The Maryland Poll ,
a.k.a. the MPoll, was conceived from two years of research toward starting
a public opinion polling research center within St. Mary’s College of
Maryland’s Political Science Department. My professional reasons were
to develop a pedagogical model incorporating more technology and involving more
public service in my political science classes as well as steering my own
professional career in that direction. (Personal reasons may have included
a knee-jerk response to certain members in the House of the US Congress who
absurdly continue to insist that ‘we don’t do science in political science.‘)Much of our activity will involve
gathering together public opinion data from polls conducted within and about
Maryland. We will also conduct our own MPolls. We conducted our first poll
from April 10 – 13 and the results were published April 18, 2014. Polls
are planned for the fall semester during the Maryland 2014 Gubernatorial
Election.Thus, the project is
multidimensional. As mentioned, the MPoll will conduct polls.
INSIGHTS, MPoll’s blog, will gather polling data and will provide
straightforward commentary as nonpartisan as is possible. As another
aspect of our public service mission, INSIGHTS will also publish background
information on polling and how to interpret
polling data. The idea is that, in addition to professional
commentary, INSIGHTS will offer the necessary background the layperson would
need to analyze polling data.We could say that commenting provides
another useful measure of public opinion. INSIGHTS as well as Hosted
Blogs are open for comments that further the discussion by presenting a more
diverse range of opinions and ideas about public opinion and political
goings-on that affect or attempt to influence the opinions of persons residing
in or near Maryland. Most often, the primary demographic of concern will
be eligible voters.All comments will be moderated.
Not all comments will be accepted. In most cases, it likely will be that
we are too overwhelmed at the moment to respond but we also hope to maintain a
reasonable level of decorum.About Candidates v. PollsComing soon. We should have
content up by the end of January on most of this site.Thank you for your patience.
About
Interpreting Polls
Coming
soon. We should have content up soon on most of this site.Thank
you for your patience.
About
Polling Techniques
Coming
soon. We should have content up soon on most of this site.Thank you for your patience.As I show elsewhere in the evidence provided, the
various polls greatly exaggerated the candidates favored to win. When the public is shown these irrelevant
stats it creates the apathy for voting for a candidate they would actually
want. Psychologically, it is known that
voters tend to follow the front-runner and this is why the exaggerated figures
for Brown, Gansler, and Mizeur were created with manipulated polling standards
like margin of error and selected polling groups of ‘likely’ voters. Can you imagine when voter turnout hits
10-20% how small and homogenous that polling pool of likely voters become? Why would polls include all republican
candidates even as they barely polled and not all of the democratic candidates?The media identified the apathy of voters as ‘not
caring’ but we know the apathy is from an inability to exact change to a system
voters know is rigged.Undecided voters dominate in new gubernatorial pollApril 23, 2014|By Michael Dresser Baltimore SunThe
poll strongly tracks previous surveys of the race and shows little sign that
any candidate is gaining significant ground. For instance, a poll released by
The Baltimore Sun in February showed Brown with 35 percent, Gansler with 14
percent and Mizeur with 10 percent. On the Republican side Hogan polled
at 13 percent and Craig at 7 percent.The methodologies of the two polls were
significantly different. Unlike the St. Mary’s poll, The Sun's poll used live
callers and concentrated on 500 likely voters rather than all registered
voters. The college’s automated
poll surveyed 954 registered voters and had a margin of error of 3.17
percentage points.Look at this media representation of
the Maryland democratic primary race for governor. The polling numbers are so skewed it is a
mockery of the election process. Again,
the use of likely voters, a subset so small as to be useless in attaining
actual polling data. Is it illegal for
media and polling agencies to deliberately skew these polling data in a way
that willfully and deliberately damages the campaign of other candidates? Yes, it is.
It is also illegal for organizations participating in these election
events to use these polling data everyone knows are skewed. I can assure this court, Cindy Walsh for Governor
of Maryland gave the larger venues participating in this primary election this
information on polling as the primary progressed. Allowing these polls saying Brown was polling
at 46% of likely voters right before the primary election and ending with 12% of registered democratic voters -----this is
a crime. It takes away all voter enthusiasm
to participate and tells prospective candidates and those like me that this
system is so corrupt you will not have a chance.Maryland PoliticsLt. Gov. Brown holds commanding lead over Democratic
rivals in Maryland governor’s race

From left, Attorney General Douglas
F. Gansler, Del. Heather R. Mizeur (Montgomery) and Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown,
the Democratic candidates for governor of Maryland. (Matt Mcclain/AP) By John Wagner and Peyton
M. Craighill June 10 Washington PostMaryland Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown
holds a commanding lead over his Democratic rivals for governor, according to a
new Washington Post poll, two weeks before a primary election that most
voters are not following closely and that is likely to attract a low turnout.Though nearly half of likely voters
say they could still change their minds, the poll found backing for Brown
across a broad demographic range — and deep support among fellow African
Americans — and showed that Brown voters are firmer in their allegiance than
those siding with the other candidates. With scant evidence that attacks on
Brown’s management skills, particularly his handling of the state’s health
insurance exchange, have damaged him, the poll shows no obvious path to victory
for the other Democratic hopefuls in
the June 24 primary.Statewide, 46 percent of likely
Democratic voters support Brown, while 23 percent back Attorney General Douglas
F. Gansler and 16 percent support Del. Heather
R. Mizeur (Montgomery), according to the poll.Analysts said Brown’s lead is
formidable in the race, in which early voting starts Thursday.“Absent a gigantic mistake from the
Brown campaign, this is probably over,” said Donald F. Norris, chairman of the
public policy department at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. “I
think the only strategy left for a candidate in Gansler’s situation is to
attack, attack, attack, and that’s likely to backfire.”If Gansler is too aggressive, Norris
reasoned, he could strike voters as desperate and wind up driving voters to
Mizeur as an alternative.Here's
the breakdown of votes in the primary as of 2:26 a.m. Wednesday, according
to the Maryland
Board of Elections, with 1982 of 1988 precincts reporting:

Republican
Larry Hogan/Boyd Rutherford: 42.79 percent
David Craig/Jeannie Haddaway: 31.95 percentCharles Lollar/Ken
Timmerman: 13.74 percent
Ronald George/Shelley Aloi: 11.53 percentIf you look at all of the election result coverage it
almost always refers to the percentage won of votes casted and not percentage
of total registered voters. You see
below the extremely low percentage of registered voters who actually
voted. As the group at St. Mary’s
College stated in the article on polling…..the problem is the failure to
educate the voters. This speaks to the
inclusion of all candidates and platforms and it speaks to the election venues
available to the citizens of Maryland.
The fact that there is not a Maryland State election platform that
allows all candidates access to forums and debates all over the state shows the
capture of this election system. The
fact that organizations tasked with the mission of free and fair election
oversight, like the Maryland League of Women Voters, use the same arbitrary
polling guidelines and front-runner status and openly work to make sure a
candidate with a certain platform does not have videotaped exposure on its
website shows a captured election system.
When the University of Maryland is telling me it uses a 15% polling
threshold and Maryland Public Television and Maryland League of Women Voters
uses 10% and they all are allowing all republican candidates mostly polling
lower than these thresholds in all forum events while excluding democratic
candidates because of platform-----you have a captured election system. As I pointed out, the private non-profits
that are taking over this duty all express prejudice and as I have proven, do
it in ways that are illegal and violate election law. The law states that the voters have the right
to go to the polls with freedom and intellect to participate as an educated
electorate. Denying viable candidates the
right to exposure and access to major forums and debates whether on media or
tied to a 501c3 event willfully and deliberately damages a candidate’s campaign
and works to keep people from this ballot intellect.I ask that you look as well at the final percentages
of registered voters for each candidate to see how this actual count compares
with the polling numbers given to us all through the governor’s race. Don’t forget that we just came through the
most media campaign advertisement blitz of the primary election period so these
percentages would be a peak. You will
notice that these percentages are closer to the St Mary’s poll in April where
most of the candidates barely broke 10% and many were around 5%. These are the polling numbers used by major
venues to exclude Cindy Walsh for Governor of Maryland and the arbitrary nature
is obvious. I would say that it is
obvious as well that some polling agencies provided polling numbers that were
so inflated and unreal as to set the stage for some candidates being labelled
front-runners and meeting guidelines.
Again, this kind of polling is so irrelevant and excludes candidates who
are relegated to the ‘undecided’ and ‘other’ category that it fails to meet the
Supreme Court ruling about identifying candidates as viable or strongly
supported by the public.
One cannot believe the Maryland Elections Board has no one on staff with a rudimentary understanding of polling methods and a history of Maryland elections to not have seen this trend and acted to eliminate this illegal bias.2014 Primary Election Results - Maryland GovernorUPDATED 2:22
PM EDT Jun 23, 2014 Governor - Dem PrimaryJune 25, 2014 - 08:26AM ETMaryland - 2033 of 2033 Precincts
Reporting - 100%NamePartyVotesVote
%Brown, AnthonyDem235,97451%Gansler, DouglasDem111,44424%Mizeur, HeatherDem99,84422%Walsh, CindyDem6,4411%Smith, CharlesDem3,2961%Jaffe, RalphDem2,9951%

Governor - GOP PrimaryJune 25, 2014 - 08:26AM ETMaryland - 2033 of 2033 Precincts
Reporting - 100%NamePartyVotesVote
%Hogan, LarryGOP89,11343%Craig, DavidGOP60,35729%Lollar, CharlesGOP32,15516%George, RonGOP25,61312%
Read more: http://www.wbaltv.com/politics/2014-primary-election-results-maryland-governor/26550226#ixzz35eavyG7jBrown
---------236,000 of 2,000,000 registered democratic voters = 12% of the voteGansler
------- 111,500 of 2,000,000 registered democratic voters = 6% of the voteMizeur
------- 100,000 of 2,000,000 registered
democratic voters = 5% of the vote Walsh
------- 6,500 of 2,000,000 registered
democratic voters = 1% of the vote23% of
registered democrats votedHogan
------ 89,000 of 1,000,000 registered
republican voters = 9% of the voteCraig
------- 60,500 of 1,000,000 registered republican voters = 6% of the voteLollar
------ 32,000 of 1,000,000 registered republican voters = 3% of the voteGeorge
----- 26,000 of 1,000,000 registered republican voters = 3% of the vote21% of
registered republicans voted.Please
look at these final election results with the actual percentage of registered
voters per candidate to see the 12% of voters for Brown to see these figures
have been super-sized from the start.
There is no reasonable explanation that after the last few weeks of
concentrated campaign advertisement and after several months of media
saturation of this one candidate that he only garners 12% of registered
democratic voters ----other than democratic voters did not want this candidate
that is now declared primary winner with 12% of the voters. Meanwhile, Cindy Walsh for Governor of
Maryland is not far behind with 1% of the vote and completely censured in the
media and major forum and debate venues.The
expedited nature of this election process denies me the ability to subpoena all
of these polling tools to verify the voracity of methods. I would as well have used the subpoena to
have an official set of guidelines for forums and debates from the institutions
I have quoted. I feel confident because
of the irrelevant methods we do see and the extreme inflation of the polls to
the reality of the election that I have proven the invalidity of polling as a
method of exclusion and identifying a candidate as viable, a front-runner, or having
strong public support. Everyone in this
primary race knew these polling figures and methods allowed this inflation of
percentages as did the organizations using polling to exclude arbitrarily. As the final results show only one candidate
meets the 10% polling requirement of Maryland Public Television and Maryland
League of Women Voters and none meet the polling requirement of University of
Maryland’s 15% polling. If this court
allows these polling agencies to arbitrarily inflate results to effect the
conduct of these elections, the election process in Maryland will remain
corrupt and disillusioned voters left with no government agency protecting free
and fair elections.The court
must recognize the systemic fraud and corruption in this democratic primary
system at all levels of operation and rule this primary election result invalid
and recognize that replicating the primary with the system without reform would
be impossible. I will be requesting in
my Federal Court lawsuit against the defendants listed that the Federal
government place an oversight decree on Maryland Elections Board and the
Maryland Democratic Party and monitor the behavior of elections in the state
over several election periods until all entities involved in the election process
understand and develop good standards of operation while participating in
elections. The candidates in the
democratic primary are all guilty of Federal election law and as such will be
tried under felony indictment. This
should give this Maryland Circuit Court further reason to declare this
democratic primary void with no second primary.Cindy
Walsh for Governor of Maryland did all that was possible to identify, report,
mitigate, and seek resolution to the violations listed in this complaint. I should not be denied my place in this
election for governor. Since I had the
ability in February 2014 to register as a general election candidate for governor
with the Green Party, I request that this be allowed now by suspending this one
time the requirement to file for this general election status by February
2104. I request the court assess
financial penalty to those government agencies assigned to protect elections
and my rights as a candidate to include candidate filing fees for myself and my
Lt Governor and for the costs of electioneering over the course of several
months.

Note:
The polls above may not reflect all polls that have been conducted in this
race. Those displayed are a random sampling chosen by Ballotpedia staff. If
you would like to nominate another poll for inclusion in the table, send an
email to editor@ballotpedia.org

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